Kixeye CEO: 'CityVille is a good game,' but its 'exact opposite audience'

The real question is, however, is would Kixeye CEO Will Harbin (pictured) call Empires & Allies, the number one strategy game on Facebook, a good strategy game? During an interview with Gamasutra, Harbin got into his company's struggles to prove that Facebook truly is a legitimate gaming platform. He mentioned that, based on his first interactions with FarmVille that he "wouldn't call it a game." However, when CityVille released in late 2010, Harbin was visibly impressed.

"When more of the traditional game guys came into Zynga, you started seeing more original titles," Harbin told Gamasutra. "CityVille is a good app, it's a good game! They kind of took like the interesting parts of, say SimCity, combining with the harvesting mechanics of FarmVille. I was pretty surprised when Zynga launched that game; it was a lot better than I expected of what they could do."

It's interesting that Harbin makes this point considering Zynga's CityVille has under fire from companies like Brazilian developer Vostu, which claims that the big time creator has copied other games while designing its own city-builder. But more importantly, Harbin makes a distinction between his audience and the FarmVille crowd: They're not the same at all. Harbin has no interest in catering to this audience, and that approach has apparently done Kixeye quite well. (And the company likely hopes it will do even better with its upcoming game, War Commander.)

"... Battle Pirates launched about a little while ago, and it's doing super well, it's very sticky in terms the users that are playing," Harbin gushed to Gamasutra. "That game was really driven by us wanting to make cool games that we wanted to play that aren't on Facebook. That's the bottom line. I'm on Facebook hours a day, and all these people are playing games are putting stupid crap on my wall. There's something to this, but there's no content that appeals specifically to me."

While Harbin goes on to elaborate, which you can read here, the main takeaway is this: Harbin and Kixeye claim to attract an audience that is not your average social gamer, and they're doing quite well at it. In fact, players of games like Kixeye's Battle Pirates--the company's most recent real-time strategy game--are coming from their Starcraft's and Call of Duty's for a hardcore experience on Facebook, according to Harbin. So, will the existing nearly 80 million hardcore Facebook gamers grow? If Harbin and Kixeye have anything to do about, then absolutely.

Playdom loses Program Manager Karen Clark to Romero's Loot Drop

Playdom, who was recently surpassed by Wooga as the fourth most popular social game developer in the world, says goodbye to program manager Karen Clark. The ex-Playdom employee is joining John Romero and his brand new social game studio. Loot Drop, as director of studio operations, Gamasutra reports. Before joining Playdom, Clark worked with Bioware and EA on creating the Dragon Age and Mass Effect franchises.

"Working at Loot Drop was an easy choice for me," Clark told Gamasutra. "I have a lot of friends in the company who believe in the social space and the opportunities it presents to recapture some of the early magic of games where the gameplay was paramount."

Clark joins a list of triple-A industry refugees, including Brenda Brathwaite, COO of Wizardry fame. Not to mention the countless traditional game designer who have opened social games companies elsewhere.

While Loot Drop's first game, Cloudforest Expedition, is already in beta testing, perhaps her hardcore expertise will come in handy for the studio's second release through RockYou? Either way, from such an eclectic manager, we can expect some interesting things to come of Loot Drop.

[Image Credit: Borderhouse Blog]

How do you think Loot Drop will benefit from taking on Clark? How could effect Playdom in the long run?

Are Pokemon and FarmVille one and the same?

Pokemon isn't stale, it's simply perfecting what works. That generally seems to be how Gamasutra's Leigh Alexander feels about the ubiquitous franchise. Since the game's debut in 1998, not many changes to the game have shaken its foundations, if any at all. Rather, Nintendo and Game Freak choose to tweak the game's mechanics and introduce features that layer upon the existing exploration and battle systems that have become iconic in their own right. Wait a second, that sounds a lot like Facebook games, does it not?

Just look at FarmVille: Every change and update introduced to the game has either streamlined an existing feature or built upon one of them. The core gameplay of harvesting crops to a timer has not changed in almost two years, and Zynga likes it that way. Not to mention that 44 million monthly players seem to like it that way too. Could it be that, if Pokemon did decide to innovate--and oft-overused term in the industry, as Alexander points out--that it would alienate its core audience? And what then; is the franchise left to rot because it tried something different, something innovative? If you were in Nintendo's shoes, you would probably hate to risk that too.

But while both are unarguably successful franchises, their numbers just aren't the same. FarmVille's decline is more visible, as the game has lost over 40 million monthly players since it peaked at 87 million this time last year. Pokemon, however, still sells nearly as well as before, but would you still consider Pikachu a household name? Regardless, it's clear that Zynga might have picked up a few tricks from the Pokemon house, and they're still working for both parties. So, don't worry, neither Squirtle nor your collection of Sheep are going away anytime soon.

Do you think Pokemon and FarmVille are similar in their design? Would either games' fan bases crumble if drastic changes were made to their foundations?